APRIL 2019
All artwork for this issue are paintings by Hannah Stahl. Originally from Providence, RI, she is an oil painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Stahl’s figurative paintings employ a stripped-down Old Master’s technique—revealing a world, not unlike our own—somewhere between the familiar and uncanny. Her work has been written about in The Huffington Post, Art New England and New England Monthly, among other publications in the U.S. and abroad. In 2014 she was granted a residency at The Leipzig International Art Program in Germany, after previously being a resident at Chautauqua Institution in 2012. Stahl received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2015, where she now is adjunct professor for the Summer Undergraduate Residency Program. Stahl’s work has been exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally and is currently represented by Atelier Newport, in Newport, RI.
“In my work I’ve been exploring the rub between our culture and nature. My intention is to participate in the conversation about consumerism and Earth being at odds with one another. My critique is articulated through symbolic paintings of events that oscillate from the banal to the momentous — all to remind my viewers that what we have come to know as our normal relationship to the earth is actually a strange disaccord.
An important aspect of my work involves exposing the deficiency that I feel is inherent in a consumerist culture. As American media and advertisements manipulate our most vulnerable—young people—a painful transition into adult life becomes inevitable. Therefore I’ve been working with the images of children —or rather children with adult heads—to express a consciousness about this system, paired with a severe inability to revise it. ”